Archive for the ‘Skill’ Category

This blog post will be slightly different from my previous entries. In this post I will do my best to explain the different types of Crowd Control found in Lord of the Rings Online.

Daze
The Daze is probably the most common type of CC used in group content. A Daze freezes a mob in place, and makes them unable to perform any action. Daze skills in the game have a duration from a few seconds up to 30 seconds. Some classes can keep single mobs perma-dazed, as it does not trigger any immunity at the end of its duration.
Damage will however break a daze, so be careful with the AoE.

Stun
The Stun behaves almost exactly like the Daze, the exception being that a Stun is not broken by damage. Therefore, Stun skills in the game usually have a much shorter duration than Daze skills. A Stun will also trigger immunity at the end of its duration, where the mob cannot be either Stunned or Dazed for a few seconds.
Some classes’ Stun skills will also trigger a Fellowship Manuevre.

Root
A Root will, as the name suggests, root a mob in place. The mob will still be able to perform actions, and most mobs will ignore the aggro table if rooted. Any player coming within range of the Rooted mobs will be attacked, regardless of aggro. Rooting ranged mobs serves no purpose unless Line of Sight is also broken.
Roots are typically broken from damage being done to the mob, although there can be skills with only a certain percentage chance of being broken on damage. Monster Player Wargs, and some types of mobs in the game have the ability to perma-root players. To break the perma root the mob usually needs to be interrupted or Dazed/Stunned.

Fear
Fears send a mob fleeing, and renders them unable to perform any action. While Fears can be good for temporary CC, i.e. getting a mob off a healer, it can also become quite chaotic if you send multiple mobs running in fear, and can complicate aggro pickup for tanks. Fears are broken by damage.
Players, or Monster Players, in PvP can be feared, but will still be able to move around freely, but will be uncapable of performing any actions.

If you feel I missed something, or feel I’ve got something wrong, please post a comment!

It appears update 14 brought not only Gondor to us, it also brought back the challenge of T2 and T2C instances!

The last couple of years the level of challenge in instances has been reduced, time and time again. It started with RoR, and went completely overboard in HD. This, along with other factors such as the Trait trees, and Turbines decision to not make any traditional instanced group content drove away many people from the game. But with update 14 something happened.

Our tactical mitigation contribution from Vitality had already been removed in an earlier update, but given the difficulty of T2 and T2C stuff, this was probably not something many thought of. And then comes update 14, which has increased the difficulty in instanced group content significantly.

While T1 is still pretty easy, T2 and T2C content has been ramped up so much, that there’s been several topics created around it on the official forums.

But there’s not just complints, as even in these threads, people are not only saying that despite the increased difficulty these instances can be completed by a good group, they’re actually showing it. In fact, there’s a thread created for just that purpose! I can’t even remember the last time there was one of those threads on the official forums.

There has also been several threads created just to thank Turbine for giving us the challenge back in instances.
Like this one, and this one.

I haven’t had much time to do instances myself since U14, and the ones I have done have been T1’s, but I can’t wait to try out some of the old instances again with the difficulty ramped up. It was so long ago since Lotro had a real challenge, so I will probably suck pretty badly until I get into it again. Just imagine, you might actually have instances where you need stat food, potions, scrolls and hope tokens. Where you actually have to pay attention to interupts and corruptions. Where you might actually wipe your group if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time doing the wrong thing.

After Helms Deep I only levelled up 2 out of my 10 chars at 85 to 95, it just felt like there was absolutely no reason whatsoever to level the rest. Now, I have started to level my alts again, because I just can’t wait to get my hands on these “new” challenges.

Let’s just hope that Turbine doesn’t listen to the few complainers (that probably should stay with the T1 instances) and nerf everything back in to oblivion before I get my chars capped and geared.

The silence from Codemasters is deafening right now. There is a thread now 193 pages long in the EU forums, mostly containing very upset players. The most upsetting thing is not the delay in itself, but the lack of communication from Codemasters, which has lead to a number of different theories on why there is a delay in the first place. Since I am a subscriber, and will let my account just roll into VIP when (if?) F2P comes, i don’t really care that much about the delay. Sure, it would be nice to see the new area, but it’ll come eventually anyway. We did get the welcome back week, at least until recently, and that gave me the perfect opportunity to power-level my Warden.

The Warden class is really cool to play, for several reasons. First of all, there’s a lot of gambits, and even if they can be hard to remember at times, it’s a fun way to test out different ways to play. All the self-healing and morale-leeching gambits really help when taking on high-morale bosses, and the DPS on the spear-gambits actually isn’t that bad. Sure, a Warden can’t keep up with the traditional DPS-classes when it comes to DPS, but for a tank, it’s outstanding. I have now hit 44 on my Warden, and I’m planning on moving into Eregion very soon, first of all to collect the last pages for my book-deeds, but also to get ready for Moria.

I did a post a while ago about doing Sword Halls with three Hunters. I am really looking forward to trying this when LOTRO goes F2P with the new and improved Hunter skills. Now we will have both interupt and corruption removal.